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WHEN TRAUMATIC EVENTS OCCUR in the home countries of their international students, international student advisers on U.S. campuses spring into action. While there is nothing they can do about the events abroad- political upheavals, natural disasters, wars, and other tragedies - there is a lot they can do to ease the anxieties of students far from their homes. These international students are in need of advisers' support because they might be unable to reach their families and may quickly face the stresses of health, financial, and legal issues.
With students from countries including war-torn Iraq, revolutionary Egypt, and hurricane-stricken Haiti, advisers must deal with issues and needs different from those of the average students from abroad, "You would think they would have the same issues as other internationals, but as you probe more, you realize these students have to be looked upon as special in many ways," says Rodolfo R. Altamirano, director of International Student and Scholar Services at the University of Pennsylvania.
"They will bring stressful social and cultural baggage with them and will face tougher challenges in adjusting to the university. We encounter a lot of this," says Altamirano. With more than 4,000 international students, Penn has worked with students from China and Chile as well as Haiti, countries all traumatized by earthquakes, and others whose homes were in the path of tsunamis in Indonesia, Altamirano reports.
"It's very different from being an adviser of international students who can go back to their home countries with no problems. Students from countries that have been through trauma don't have the ability to resolve their issues by going home, so trying to help those students creates a different scenario," declares Adria L. Baker, executive director of the Office of International Students and Scholars at Rice University.
Students from trauma countries "add an extra layer of complexity" to the challenges international student advisers normally face, states Mark Hallett, director of International Student and Scholar Services in the Office of International Programs at Colorado State University.
He cites Hanaa Thigeel, a native of Iraq, who had been married four days in 2004 when the car in which she and her husband were riding on their honeymoon hit an improvised explosive device that killed her husband and...